Agreed! John, can I have your permission to use this as my signature line? It is pretty funny, I like it!

I don't think it's funny enough for a signature line, but suit yourself. I'm glad some part of that (my) post was good. It is now clear I was wrong in both my reasons for thinking the 4732 upgrade was not very relevent because:

1) Several commands from DVD/0490 must actually work on the 4743 (based on Ed's post early this morning).

2) A combo protocol is actually needed even if the DVD is used on it's own device key, because the DVD part of the combo device uses VCR commands for transport functions.

it's not backlit. If it was it would be the (almost) perfect control. Buttons are too small as well. My vision had deteriorated to.

I guess my vision has deteriorated more than that, or at least very differently than that, so a backlit remote wouldn't help me at all.

Since high school, I've had a vision problem that I assume is rare because I've never heard of anyone else having it. I take longer to refocus my eyes from far to near than ordinary people, so if I switch from looking at TV to looking at the remote there was always an extra second before I could see the remote. Adding typical loss of near vision from aging, at some point I stopped being able to see things like writing on a remote with my glasses on (that I wear just for driving and for watching TV), so I have to take my glasses off and then wait for my eyes to refocus in order to really see the remote. Recently even that's failing. I'd need to take off my TV glasses and put on magnifiers I bought for occasional close work (taking out splinters, repairing tiny devices, etc.).

The bottom line for using a remote control is just remember which buttons do what by shape and position, not by what's written on them. Usually I don't look at the remote at all to use it. If I glance at the remote I don't need to see any details, just overall shape.

(Sorry about getting so far into eyesight rather than remotes, but someone reading the above would suggest bifocals, so I'll just mention there are other problems ruling those out. I guess at some point I'll be carrying around two different pairs of glasses all the time and switching between them. For now, I can read a computer screen very well without glasses as long as it's 16 to 22 inches away.)